Huda Beauty The New Nude Eye Shadow Palette Review

Price: $65

Currently available at Huda Beauty

Not Cruelty Free

Not Vegan

Brand Controversy(ies): Brand Founder has been accused of ripping off Beauty Bakerie's packaging concept and art (her photo shoot for her baking powder comes to mind), has been accused of appropriating ColourPop's Monochromatic palettes for Neon and Pastel Collection (the Neon Pink and the Pastels are an example) and has been accused of stealing eye shadow color stories from Indie Makeup Brands, refuses to feature men wearing her makeup as part of her social media promotion, has neglected to show BIPOC wearing her make up in her promotional marketing and social media, countless others to mention.

Huda Beauty, there is so much to say about the brand and even more to say about the brand founder herself, Huda Kattan. I will get into more detail about my decision regarding reviewing Huda Kattan's products in the future later on in this review. If you recall my last review of her product, Huda Beauty's Shimmers and mattes are some of the most pigmented, least amount of fallout and product kickup and easily blendable shadows that I have worked with.

So, what is up with her New Nude palette?

Before I get into the details, here are the colors for the palette:

Bare, a very light pink/nude matte that works as a highlight.

Crave, a shimmery, foil, light peach.

Play, a light, vibrant, matte peach.

Fantasy, a shimmery, foil, burgundy with a pink shift and glitter.

Love Bite, a matte red-violet

Spanked, a matte, muted burgundy

Lace, a matte nude/mauve tone.

Daydream, a shimmery, foil pink shade.

Tickle, a matte, dusty rose.

Excite, a burgundy glitter.

Infatuated, a copper-peach glitter.

Kinky, a burgundy shimmer.

Concealed, a very light skin tone concealer that can also stand in as a primer.

Secret, a dusty coral/brown matte.

Tease, a matte, dark taupe.

Raw, a dark pink/brown matte.

Charmed, a copper, foil with pink glitter.

Teddy, a dusty, dark terracotta matte.

On first glance, her lovely foil shades Fantasy, Crave, Daydream and Charmed are what caught my eye. As I continued to play with the rest of the palette, I realized that the color story was very similar to another palette, by another brand that I owned:

Urban Decay's Naked Cherry Palette.

Both are very similar in their color stories, however, Naked Cherry did not have the loose glitter in its palette. One thing I can note is that the formula of the matte shades and shimmer/foil shades is very consistent with the last palette of the brand that I reviewed. However, I do have a problem with three of her shades; Excite, Infatuated and Concealed.

Excite and Infatuated are beautiful colors, but the glitter felt a little scratchy when I swatched it on my arm, so knowing that, I wouldn't personally use these shades for my eyes because of the scratch factor, however, there are people that will and in order to get the glitter shades to work, you need to use glitter glue.

Concealed is a nice idea, but it only benefits people of very fair to light skin tones. People who have meduim to deep dark skin tones are not going to find much use out of the Concealed primer (foundation?) unless it is used as a base for lighter colors. Overall, this palette could have replaced these three shades with another matte and two shimmers.

As far as the packaging goes, it is nice and the plastic card, while nice was unnecessary and a waste of packaging as far as I'm concerned. Overall, the palette is a lovely palette, but calling it a nude palette is not accurate.

Before I give my final rating for this product, I have decided that this will be my last Huda Beauty product review on this blog for a while until Huda Kattan gets her act together. If you have read the brand controversies regarding Huda Kattan and the brand, you knew that I was going to make this decision. One of the big things I look for in makeup brands and brands overall, is inclusive marketing and inclusive products, something that Huda Kattan, of all people, should have made a priority.

To be fair, her products are inclusive, but my biggest issue with her is that she rarely features BIPOC and men who wear makeup in her marketing and social media marketing. Huda's explanation for not featuring men who wear makeup in her promotional ads is that it is not culturally accepted and illegal where she comes from. It seems like a somewhat valid argument, just slightly undercut by the very fact that she is AMERICAN! Adding insult to injury, she has yet to apologize to Beauty Bakerie for taking her packaging concept for one of her products and copying Beauty Bakerie's promotional photo shoot for Beauty Bakerie's Baking Flour Product. I also want to give Cashmere, CEO of Beauty Bakerie a lot of credit for responding this situation in a very classy way by saying "Don't worry Huda, there's room at the table for you too." Cashmere handled this a lot better than I would have.

This is my personal decision as a consumer. However, you are free to continue supporting her and her products as you see fit. Until she has more inclusive marketing and apologizes to Cashmere, CEO of Beauty Bakerie, I refuse to purchase any more of her products. It is a shame, because her products are really good and should really speak for themselves.

If you do decide to continue purchasing her products, be aware of what you as a consumer, are supporting when you spend your money on her products.

This palette gets 7 foiled shades out of 10.

#hudabeauty #newnudepalette #makeupreview #notsponsored